1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for analyzing a personal behavior. The invention particularly relates to a personal behavior analysis apparatus for analyzing the behavior of a customer entered a store such as a convenience store or supermarket, and a method for analyzing a personal behavior with a program that enables a computer to function as the analysis apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese laid-open patent application publication No. 2006-350751 discloses a sales analysis apparatus that uses a technique of tracking a personal flow-line as a system for analyzing a behavior of a customer entered a store. This sales analysis apparatus comprises a picture database storing pictures shot by cameras installed within a store, each picture being correlated with time information; a sales information database storing sales information including purchased commodities input from a sales information input device, each piece of the sales information correlated with a purchase time; a flow-line conversion processing section that first acquires a picture stored in the picture database performing image processing to the picture to extract a person and track the person extracted, and generates flow-line data including coordinates indicative of person's position and person's ID information correlated with the time information; and a flow-line database storing the flow-line data generated by the flow-line conversion processing section. The sales analysis apparatus is configured to extract a target person from the sales information database by designating the sales information and specify flow-line data in the flow-line database based on the purchase time of the target person and display the flow-line data.
However, although customer behavior analyzing systems in the prior art including the above-described sales analysis apparatus can analyze a flow-line of an optionally selected customer as a target person, it cannot perform statistical analysis focusing on what characteristics such a target person has in a subpopulation.